By Mike
Cancer patients may have no other choice but to resort to in order to treat their illness. In oncology, adjuvant will have quite a special role for the patient because it is related to other cancer treatments. Adjuvant is an additional treatment administered to the patient following a surgical intervention as a means to prevent the possible development of the cancer cells that may have remained after the removal. The health condition is often susceptible to relapses in cancer cases, since no specialist can foresee the evolution or involution of cancer cells. Radiotherapy or regular chemical-based treatments are included in the adjuvant category and they are recommended by the doctors based on some statistical evidence which is employed in order to figure out whether there is low or high risk in relapse for the patient. Statistics indicate that about a third of the patients who have received adjuvant treatment have resumed good health only through surgical intervention. For those who are not included in the above mentioned third, the long term aim of the adjuvant is to increase the life extent of the sufferer. The types

of cancer in which adjuvant is used are quite various and here we may include colon cancer, lung, pancreatic, breast and prostate cancer as well as some forms of gynecological cancers. In terms of parallel treatments, adjuvant is complemented by neo-adjuvant chemotherapy. The neo-variant consists in the administration of drugs in the stage preceding the anti-cancer treatment per se. For example, neo-adjuvant may be prescribed to a patient suffering from breast cancer who will undergo breast-removal surgery. The purpose of such a type of therapy is to reduce the size of the tumor so that the surgery may be performed more efficiently and with less risk. All in all, adjuvant is presently considered more effective when it is prescribed after the tumor removal rather than before it because the remaining cancer cells are fewer in number and, as a result, the drug is more powerful on them. The drugs specific to this type of treatment are most efficient when they are administered directly into the blood of the patient, that is, intravenously; another way of increasing drug effects is to use it locally in the exact body part attacked by cancer.
This article is written by Mike